While not as vibrant as Spring, this is around the time of the equinox and the beginning of Autumn. There are amazing blooms from the succulents in the front yard which we love, but some of the changing colors (not the ones typical of the ones “leafers” look for in New England) are in flux in the background, so there’s a lot of green right now, which I keep arguing IS a color. Soon there will be a lot of blue from the rosemary bushes, and some of the other “green blobs” will have white and yellow flowers as the two mature plum trees lose most of their leaves, taking some of our privacy away in one direction for a few months. The lemon tree is about to have tons of ripening take place too.
I now have two remote-controlled spinners for the optical illusion ball in wire object and the metal globe with the repurposed license plate Vallejo sign. This gives some idea of our backyard porch view and part of our garden, with some cameos from a few dogs. You can hear the four water features going. They turn on courtesy of Alexa at sunrise and shut off when the lights come on at sunset, which is also when the solar lights illuminate the back garden areas. This is our sanctuary (especially during early Covid).
…in the making of this video, but I wanted to convince myself that it was alive, so I kept bumping it until it stretched its arms out to brace itself.
Under my gardening table I have a trash can that I use for convenience to discard things I can’t compost. I almost reached in to get one of the bamboo leaves that fell in there, only to see that it was a living bug! Lest you think I was making it up, here’s the juxtaposition from the bamboo area of our backyard and under the outdoor staircase where a lot of the dead bamboo leaves collect.
When we first moved here to Vallejo our friend Manny who lives on Mare Island and who used to live in Glen Cove, gave Shando some clippings that we planted in our front yard. Most memorably Manny said, “No matter what you do, these CANNOT die.”
That was very helpful in my decision to start getting serious about gardening. We replaced the small patch of grass that I was not very thrilled to have to mow with this area where we planted a young palm tree surrounded by succulents with mulch.
I’ve since killed LOTS of things in our gardens, but these have survived, just like Manny said. Indeed, THIS year they have grown with leaps and bounds, and look how beautiful they’ve bloomed this week!
Through a circuitous, tortuous, and even serpentine route, I was gifted a certain serpentine cactus of a type unique to my eyes. I think it fits in with my cactus area nicely. Thanks to James, Jason, Greg, and Steve for thinking of my garden and me!
I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with this repurposed metal art globe I bought at the Benicia Peddler’s Fair recently. I tried putting a plant in it, but I didn’t like having the bottom of the pot showing all that much. I’ll probably end up putting some spherical decoration in it, but I like it empty as well.
With a different vendor at that same event, I bought this Vallejo sign which is comprised of repurposed license plates. It includes Ohio (where my husband is from) and Massachusetts (where he also lived). At the end of this video, you will see that I put an optical illusion item at the end of the globe, but I decided that one will warrant its own remote-controlled spinner, which I’m ordering. I think the visual is more dramatic with the Vallejo sign, even though I might ultimately move it to another part of the garden.
In our garden, I like having kinetic activities to go with nature. We have bird feeders, de facto bird baths, our pack of little dogs wandering around the various tiers, swings (gravity egg chairs), and many comfortable places to nap. Most importantly toward this end, we have four water features that turn on with our smart home at sunrise and turn off at sunset daily, when our solar lights kick in. Some creative, festive lighting also turns on indoors and outdoors at sunset (as it changes throughout the year). Many of those are controlled by smart plugs, so when we say “good night” they do not remain on until sunrise.
From all points of the backyard, including in the hot tub, one smart device or another will pick up commands to change the music or turn something or other on or off.
This new movement of the globe and other forthcoming decor will add a new element of motion for those to rest in what I hope is a pastoral sanctuary when they visit our home and garden.
For those who have been following, the morning dove chicks in the welcome sign on our front porch are growing beautifully. Below you can see two chicks with one of their parents. The other parent is usually fluttering nearby on our roof, which hangs pretty close to the nest. They trust the chicks enough to stay safe when they both leave the nest now. We put out some birdseed nearby.
Seeing them healthy and thriving when we returned from vacation was inspiring, especially after we had observed another kind of chick that was extremely young and which had fallen from its nest outside of our hotel room.
In a previous posting of the doves at our home, I only saw one chick that had very scrawny feathers, so it’s good to see them this mature and well-fed.
This family home is hanging up with one nail! When they leave for the year, I’m going to make sure it’s reinforced. I’m told they will probably come back to nest there annually, which is thrilling.
And for the skeptics who think these aren’t real, here is some updated video:
